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If you're a cancer specialist seeking participants for your clinical trial, take note. The floodgates may well open as Cancer: Evolution to Revolution hits the HBO lineup and its companion Web site launches on the Internet. This two-and-a-half-hour informational documentary is a timely demonstration of television's ability to rise to viewers' needs with true public service programming, providing dozens of contact phone numbers and Web addresses for virtually every cancer organization in the cou

Unplanned obsolescence is the fallout of risky biotech businesses, especially in glycobiology, a small niche marketplace. A specialty manufacturer can spend millions in R&D to bring a new piece of equipment to market, only to find that customer demand never catches up with cost. As a result, high-profile customers can be left high and dry with brand-new instruments and little or no guarantees for parts, reagents, or support. Also, manufacturers sell off product lines and offer limited period

Early cartographers, without the luxury of an aerial view of their surroundings, did their best to map expanses of land based on expeditions and, of course, on previous maps. Although quite helpful, they and their maps were often less than perfect. Cartographers sketching the layout of the American colonies, for example, might map a lake or a mountain that simply didn't exist. Subsequent maps might then incorporate the make-believe landmark, sometimes even "moving" it several miles from its pre

Graphic: Cathleen Heard Although a smaller percentage of African American women are diagnosed with breast cancer than white women, African Americans are more likely to die from breast cancer than women from other ethnic groups. Vietnamese American women have the highest cervical cancer rates of any ethnic group. And poor Americans of all races have higher rates of cancer incidence and mortality than do people from other socioeconomic groups. The Institute of Medicine's (IOM) report The Une

Although the Institute of Medicine report1 on health disparities between ethnic and socioeconomic groups in the United States has focused government agencies on improving health of minorities and the poor, National Institutes of Health leaders say their institutes began dealing with these issues before the report was released. And their forthcoming plan will be major. At the Intercultural Cancer Council's Biennial Symposium held in Washington, D.C., in early February with a focus on health

In the human tragedy of HIV infection, dendritic cells play a vicious double role analogous to an international cocaine trafficker who morphs into a street-level crack peddler. These antigen-presenting immune-system cells transport HIV from the mucosal membranes near which it enters the body to secondary lymphoid organs. There, the cells pass the virus over to the T lymphocytes that it will ultimately destroy. Exactly how dendritic cells serve these functions is unknown, but two new studie

Officials at the National Institutes of Health are anticipating that problems will arise with implementation of the Shelby amendment. Passed by Congress last year, the amendment mandates that scientists make data from federally funded projects publicly available under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). "FOIA is too crude an instrument for this; it was never designed for scientific data sharing," commented Wendy Baldwin, NIH deputy director for extramural research, at a session of the America

When inventors apply for a patent, they must set forth the utility of their invention and describe it. Which utilities and description meet the grade, and which don't? The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) recently proposed new guidelines for its examiners. These guidelines were discussed in an article titled "Biotech Faces Evolving Patent System" in the last issue of The Scientist.1 PTO had not at that time published specific examples of how the guidelines would be interpreted. The office

Music's Role in ... Life Are there universal principles of musical sounds and musical construction that apply to human music and that of other species? Yes, according to Roger Payne, the renowned humpback whale expert and founder-president of the Whale Conservation Institute. More than that, he contends, music just may have been central to the creation of life. Payne, who is perhaps best known for his codiscovery with Scott McVay that the long and complex vocalizations of humpback whales are in

Courtesy of National Heart, Lung, and Blood InstituteMRI scans of the heart: upper left, torso with heart; upper right, cross section at aortic valve; lower left, lateral view of heart, pulmonic valve, and descending aorta; lower right, four-chamber view In the not too distant future, emergency rooms may well take on the aura of Star Trek's hospital bay. New, state-of-the-art magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machines offer fast, efficient, and highly detailed data, allowing physicians to make im

Once a favorite of Chinese emperors, tofu is now big time. From supermarkets to health food boutiques, diet-conscious Americans are buying soybeans, not just as tofu but in infant formula, soy milk, and soy burgers. Soy even has the Food and Drug Administration's seal of approval. Last October the FDA responded to a petition by Protein Technologies International, a St. Louis-based DuPont company specializing in soy products, by authorizing claims that soy protein is good for the heart. Acc

Food allergies affect up to 6 percent of children under the age of 3 and around 1.5 percent of adults.1,2 That may seem like peanuts compared to the huge number of people who suffer from allergic rhinitis. But food allergies--especially peanut and tree nut allergies--pack a potentially serious punch. There is absolutely no safe way to treat or prevent them, and about 100 people die in the United States every year from food-induced anaphylaxis. The best those with severe allergies can do is carry